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High quality media player for Android

DanielT

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Has this been tested? Is what is said true?

Anyone have this player? Experiences?

HIGH QUALITY MEDIA PLAYER FOR ANDROID
Supporting USB audio DACs to play audio files up to 32-bit resolution at any sample rate! Will play any popular format including wav, flac, wavpack, ape, mp3 and DSD files. This app is a must have for every HiFi enthusiast, bypassing all audio limits of Android.

BYPASSING THE LIMITS OF ANDROID
When connecting an Android phone or tablet to a USB DAC, USB Audio Player PRO will unleash the full power of the DAC, by using our custom developed USB audio driver. This bypasses the Android audio system completely, meaning that Android's limitations regarding bit resolution and sample rate (16-bit/48kHz) are made irrelevant and high quality audio streams are fed directly to the DAC, making playback up to 32-bit at 384kHz possible (depending on the DAC capabilities) or even DSD.


CONNECTING A USB DAC
You can use any Android device, given that it runs Android 3.1 or higher, has USB host support and support for isochronous USB transfers in the kernel. You connect the Android device to the DAC using a USB OTG cable to trigger USB host mode, like displayed in the picture, here showing a Nexus 5 connected to a JDS Labs C5D.

https://www.extreamsd.com/index.php/products/usb-audio-player-pro
 
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DanielT

DanielT

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Even if what is said is true, can one know anything about how, for example, the frequency response is affected? Or maybe it is not affected at all? It would be fun to get more bits out of the Android, but not at the expense of whether it can possibly affect, change, the signal from the Android, ie the sound negatively.
 

Vincent Kars

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I don’t think their claims are excessive or incorrect.
Like any other OS, Android runs at a specific sample rare.
I don’t think there is a user interface to change this.
However, programmers can bypass the default audio and this allows for playback at different and hopefully native sample rate of the audio file.
Probably like WASAPI/Exclusive in Win or Hogmode in OSX
 
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DanielT

DanielT

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Thanks for the reply.

It is probably a sensible serious company that markets sensible products. Not my intention to speak ill of, or suspect:
https://www.extreamsd.com/index.php

In the last year, I have rekindled my youth interest in Hifi. This with combining IT and sound is a, for me, fairly new phenomenon.

Has in the past year encountered snake oil. Hence my suspicion. HiFi is a slightly strange industry. What makes a lot of sense is mixed with, very suspicious solutions and ideas, theories.

Luckily I found ASR.
 

ZolaIII

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They just where among first to caim with semi costume USB - USB audio drajver.
Today you have a lot of alternative of which some is free like for instance; HiBy Music, FiiO Music, Shanling Music all do for propetry futures such as MQA decoder you will have to make additional purchases (pay). Not that you don't need to do the same with Audio Player Pro (tho on some older LG's in built in one actually worked with out of nead for additional paid plugin). But what's the fuss anyway as MQA is a gimmick. To me personally HF Player (Onkyo) whose the best of all paid/free one's but I am afraid it's dead for quite some time now, so I learned to live with HiBy Music.
 

Katji

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Has Spotify completely missed that there is a high-res war going on?
Is there? Or is it just an audiophile thing?

Spotify is different, at least with the software development philosophy and so on. So it seems quite likely that the planning, the agenda, is different too.
Anyway, it has been implemented - why these things happen per country, I don't know...maybe something to do with payment systems, or infrastructure, I don't know. [...?]
 
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DanielT

DanielT

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Maybe to overdramatize but the suppliers have in 2021 started offering lossless at low cost.Good price, I think anyway :)

Tidal, Amazon Music HD, Qobuz and now Apple Music offer hi-res quality streams. Which deserves your monthly fee?

The battle to become the best music streaming service to offer hi-res streams is well and truly underway. Gone are the days when all a streaming platform had to do was offer up low-quality OGG VORBIS or MP3 streams and make you endure a few ads for the privilege. In 2021, the key to victory is ad-free, unlimited streaming in high-resolution quality – and, crucially, for the best price.


https://www.whathifi.com/advice/hi-res-music-streaming-services-compared
 

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DanielT

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Anyway, it has been implemented - why these things happen per country, I don't know...maybe something to do with payment systems, or infrastructure, I don't know. [...?]

Hmm, not in Sweden, as far as I know. I have to check it out.:)

Was there a price increase regarding Spotify lossless in your country? Have you tried Spotify lossless yourself?
 

tuga

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Maybe to overdramatize but the suppliers have in 2021 started offering lossless at low cost.Good price, I think anyway :)

Tidal, Amazon Music HD, Qobuz and now Apple Music offer hi-res quality streams. Which deserves your monthly fee?

The battle to become the best music streaming service to offer hi-res streams is well and truly underway. Gone are the days when all a streaming platform had to do was offer up low-quality OGG VORBIS or MP3 streams and make you endure a few ads for the privilege. In 2021, the key to victory is ad-free, unlimited streaming in high-resolution quality – and, crucially, for the best price.

https://www.whathifi.com/advice/hi-res-music-streaming-services-compared

As in supermarket price wars, ultimately it's the producer (artist) who gets skrewed.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2...e-reset-of-music-streaming-to-protect-artists

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2...-insider-say-publication-parliamentary-report

https://www.theguardian.com/culture...g-musicians-and-things-are-only-getting-worse
 

Jimbob54

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If you use tidal, qobuz or local files, uapp is by far the best android player I have used. Reasonable ($5 ish) add ons for 10 band peq etc.

It's not great as a browser of content for those streamers but great for playback especially with a USB dac. Even allows proper shuffles of large tidal playlists that the tidal app doesn't
 

julian_hughes

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Has this been tested? Is what is said true?
.....

It's a very good player which uses its own audio driver with capable phones, and with phones with a USB DAC connected. Yes, it works! If you have adb (Android Debug Bridge) installed you can, via the adb shell, query what is happening with the audio playback and see for yourself what is happening. It's not a marketing trick or a con. With compatible devices you can forget about the limitations of stock android audio. Another app which is also similarly capable is Neutron Music Player. Both are excellent players which can bypass the stock audio framework and deliver bit perfect playback with compatible devices/hardware. They differ quite a lot in terms of interface and some other capabilities but each is excellent in its own terms and I'm pleased I bought both several years ago.
 
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DanielT

DanielT

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Hmmm, well worth a look. Your links. See attached picture. If that's true then maybe Qobuz should be considered for the sake of the musicians.

https://www.soundguys.com/qobuz-review-50100/

(looks like a Qobuz sponsored site, but the information on compensation levels is probably correct)
 

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DanielT

DanielT

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If you use tidal, qobuz or local files, uapp is by far the best android player I have used. Reasonable ($5 ish) add ons for 10 band peq etc.

It's not great as a browser of content for those streamers but great for playback especially with a USB dac. Even allows proper shuffles of large tidal playlists that the tidal app doesn't

Aha, ok.:)
 
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DanielT

DanielT

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It's a very good player which uses its own audio driver with capable phones, and with phones with a USB DAC connected. Yes, it works! If you have adb (Android Debug Bridge) installed you can, via the adb shell, query what is happening with the audio playback and see for yourself what is happening. It's not a marketing trick or a con. With compatible devices you can forget about the limitations of stock android audio. Another app which is also similarly capable is Neutron Music Player. Both are excellent players which can bypass the stock audio framework and deliver bit perfect playback with compatible devices/hardware. They differ quite a lot in terms of interface and some other capabilities but each is excellent in its own terms and I'm pleased I bought both several years ago.

Mighty interesting.:D It will be to try out this weekend. I don't care if we in our country have not received Spotify lossless yet should come any day, week now). Fun to try, anyway.

Also, given the levels of compensation for artists, musicians, I might consider switching to Qobuz. If the information I pointed out in my post above is correct.
 

Grooved

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Mighty interesting.:D It will be to try out this weekend. I don't care if we in our country have not received Spotify lossless yet should come any day, week now). Fun to try, anyway.

Also, given the levels of compensation for artists, musicians, I might consider switching to Qobuz. If the information I pointed out in my post above is correct.

I use USB Audio Player Pro with Tidal and Qobuz from my Android device. Like said, it's not the easiest interface, but it works great, and has PEQ add-on and MQA decoder add-on (which can decode MQA if your DAC can't or is MQA renderer only). Very good app.
 
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MRC01

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Another vote for USB Audio Player Pro. It does what it says, bypassing the Android system resampling to a fixed rate, transmitting the unmodified audio bits out the USB at their native rate. It also has good support; if you contact the developer he responds promptly and helps you.

The only real limitation is that it only does this for audio played through the app itself. It can't change the Android system behavior for other apps. So it doesn't help if you're using other apps like Idagio to play audio. Of course, this is not a bug in the app; it simply doesn't do that. Just pointing it out.
 

Jimbob54

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Another vote for USB Audio Player Pro. It does what it says, bypassing the Android system resampling to a fixed rate, transmitting the unmodified audio bits out the USB at their native rate. It also has good support; if you contact the developer he responds promptly and helps you.

The only real limitation is that it only does this for audio played through the app itself. It can't change the Android system behavior for other apps. So it doesn't help if you're using other apps like Idagio to play audio. Of course, this is not a bug in the app; it simply doesn't do that. Just pointing it out.
A world where you could put Spotify, amazon music etc etc into UAPP would be ideal. But I appreciate its not within the developers gift to make it work.
 
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